Zahra Balador
Victoria university of Wellington, Newzealand
Title: The hotspots of the research on the building insulations which are made from agro-wastes
Biography
Biography: Zahra Balador
Abstract
Building insulation material as a building element will play a role in the building energy performance and the environmental footprints, since the building envelop greatly have influence on the energy efficiency of the building. The growing need for sustainable materials has urged researchers to find some insulation materials as well as other building materials which have lower burden on the environment, e.g. natural, or recycled materials. Some of the building materials which are in their early stage are building insulations made from agricultural by-products, because they are biodegradable, sustainable and recyclable. There are some examples such as Kenauf which are in the competitive market. But there is a long way for the other alternatives of bio-based insulation materials to go to the market, because their characteristics are not known completely yet. This study aims to show which parts of their characteristics and behaviors need more attention and further research to make these alternatives more reliable and competitive, and change this idea that insulations are always petrochemical materials. This study by reviewing the literature and classifying the researches on the unconventional insulation materials into different categories, e.g. thermal, acoustical, structural, environmental behaviors, will reveal the hotspots of this procedure, and make further researches in this field easier.